Page 24 - The Language of Humour

‘I SAY, I SAY, I SAY’ 11
quite get words right and uses ones of a similar sound but an
inappropriate meaning. This is now termed a malapropism

Illiterate him, I say, quite from your memory.

This is sometimes the cause of accidental ‘howlers’ found in students’
work and collected by teachers and examiners: ‘The girl tumbled down
the stairs and lay prostitute at the bottom.’
The Reverend William Archibald Spooner was a tutor at Oxford
University who became famous for mixing up the initial sounds of
words (a device now called Spoonerism), although many of the
examples attributed to him are now known to be apocryphal (invented).
Here he is addressing a student:

You have tasted two worms and must leave by the town drain.

Such a device can also be used deliberately for humour, as in the
following, which suggests—but does not articulate—a taboo word:

He is a shining wit.

Allusions in humour involve extra-linguistic knowledge, in other words
knowledge about the world. The double meaning may involve reference
to a saying or quotation. If the listener does not share the same
awareness of this, the ambiguity cannot be recognised.

Cogito ergo Boom. (Susan Sontag)

The listener needs to know the French philosopher Descartes’s statement
‘Cogito ergo sum’ (I think, therefore I am) and also to understand that
‘Boom’ refers to a nuclear explosion.

Activity with text
Categorise the following jokes under the types given above. Indicate
where the ambiguity occurs, by underlining, or marking stress etc. Note
those where recognition of an allusion is required.